We’ve been fans of Dan Pearce, who shares his musings on Single Dad Laughing, for quite some time. But we really fell in love with the Utah blogger when he wrote the fairly amazing essay, “I’m Christian, Unless You’re Gay,” which inspired a nervous teen to come out to his religious mother.
Now Pearce, 32, has taken his own risk—coming out as bisexual to friends, family members and his readers.
In “Anything Other Than Straight,” he writes:
Those words are by far the most difficult words I’ve ever typed, and I know they’ll be far more difficult to share.
A very small handful of people whom I trust most know my secret now, and all of them only learned it in the last few months. Their love has been unconditional.
But love is not unconditional coming from every person. We all know that.
Guidelines for acceptable sexuality have been drilled into me my entire life, and the mandate has always been clear. Being anything other than straight will never be tolerable, at least not with the vast majority of the people in my family and in my community.
That damned mandate.
The one that tells us we are to claim love, but we are to never actually love those who we have been told are unacceptably different.
A few months ago, I used an admittedly effeminate hand gesture at family dinner. I naturally use it all the time, only this time it was shortly after the emotional shift toward coming out had started to happen within me.
My brother saw me do it. He laughed uncomfortably and then all too seriously said, “please tell me you’re still straight.”
There are many that have worried about my sexuality for a long time now. And the way he said it, I intrinsically knew that to be anything other than straight might do great damage to something between us. I just laughed it off. I wasn’t ready to tell him yet. I couldn’t tell him yet.
Dear God, please don’t let me be anything other than straight.
You can read Dan’s full post here. For those of you who think bisexuals have it easy (or don’t even exist) we’d say it’s mandatory reading.
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Mischiefwolf
Dan’s blogs since then are also a must read as he has been sharing all the darkest moments that lead up to his coming out and the aftermath.
PRINCE OF SNARKNESS aka DIVKID
welcome to the gaybourhood…or bi equivalent(?)
okay, now i’m really, really, curious as to what that hand gesture looked like. video? btw the whole selling point of bisexuals is the lack of such extravagant hand gestures etc. ;P
p.s godamn my shallow ass-ness but it needs saying: fella is hella HOT!
off to read full article now… to return, doubtless, ashamed of this squalid response.
startenout
An amazing guy. I think it must be very difficult to come out as bisexual since you receive grief from both sides and their isn’t a huge bisexual support system…unless I keep missing the bi bars and bi-pride centers. lol